Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I offer my congratulations to you and to my colleague, Helen Burnet, member for Clark, for your appointments today.
I start my contribution in this 52nd parliament with an acknowledgement of the Palawa people as the original and traditional owners of the land we meet on and the islands, water, seas and skies of the place we all now call home. In my electorate, here in Nipaluna/Hobart, where we sit, the original peoples, the Muwinina, are no longer. Lost to invasion, war and disease, I cannot acknowledge their elders present. There are none. But their hopes and aspirations live on through the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and I acknowledge its struggle, survival, connection to country, and ongoing cultural practice. I acknowledge their elders and Palawa people with us today or watching online.
No matter what the makeup of this House or who sits on which benches, there is no doubt, that this parliament can do better for Lutruwita’s Palawa people. For too long we have failed them. We must be bigger. We must do better.
As we go into this debate, let’s not argue over who’d be better placed to deliver for Aboriginal people, the land returns, the heritage laws that protect cultural landscapes and empowers Aboriginal decision-making, the truth and treaty, the funding and support needed to close the gap, and the desperate action needed to keep kids out of Ashley and adults out of Risdon.
Following lifetime after lifetime of letdown, I can well see why no one in the Aboriginal community would believe any of us. Let’s just agree to do better and work together to make it so.
In the Westminster system, no confidence is a serious matter and we Greens treat it as such. We weigh it up, talk it through, consult widely and come to a conclusion. We make a decision. Abstention is not an option. We are elected to make decisions, easy and hard.
In early June, when presented with a motion of no confidence in the Premier, we did our due diligence, consulted, made our case, lost an amendment, and eventually cast our votes. We don’t have confidence in a Rockliff Liberal government. We didn’t back then and we don’t now.
Hansard records the debate on 5 June, our views on the failures, the broken promises, the contempt, and the cavalier approach to the budget and how taxpayers money is managed under this government. Hansard records we voted Premier Rockliff down in a successful no confidence vote that opened up the promise of a new government, a different agenda, a better way of working together, and improved outcomes for all Tasmania. But Labor, then as now, didn’t step up and we went to an election.
Our offer of a conversation to discuss and negotiate the opportunity to work across the chamber under a Winter government was passed up for a poll, with not so much as a simple discussion to investigate that opportunity and what we each had to do to realise it.
We thought there was an alternative government, a better one, willing, able and ready to step up and work with us all in a way that can make the most of the immense opportunity that comes with a collaborative parliament. A parliament where no one person gets their way, where language is more measured, dialogue is fostered, outcomes better targeted and the electorate more content. A parliament working the way it should, the way it was voted in; a diverse mix of Tasmanians electing a diverse mix of representatives to deliver a diverse mix of outcomes.
We voted no confidence in June and waited for the phone call, but despite our best efforts to invite conversation, it never came and we went to that election. The results of that election are now recorded in history. Status quo in broad numbers, some churn in individual members and a more progressive crossbench. A recommissioned Rockliff government and a diminished Labor Party.
To drive for no confidence, pass over the opportunity to govern, force an election but not be ready to win it begs questions of strategy, sense, courage, self-reflection and ability. With no gain in seat numbers, a statewide swing against them and just 25 per cent of the vote. No one can argue that the momentum is with the Leader of the Opposition and that the privilege of government can be expected and not earned.
To form government, Labor need at least eight other members to back them. Five Greens and three Independents does it for them. Ten Labor, eight crossbench. Not quite a balance, but more even than any past minority arrangement. If you have just 10 of 18 views in a relationship, you can’t expect to get it all your own way. If you’ve got just 25 per cent of the vote, why would you demand 100 per cent of the outcome? That’s not how it works. Not in life, not in politics, and not in this parliament.
That’s how Labor went into the post-election challenge of forming government. It didn’t see it as a challenge, it saw it as a right. An expectation. An entitlement. How is it that it took until two weeks ago, weeks after the election, for Mr Winter to accept the Leader of the Greens suggestion of a sit-down discussion on what it would take for us Greens to back this motion today? We did everything we could to work across the parliament and to realise the change we promised Tasmanians we’d fight for.
Over the last two weeks we met with Labor multiple times and had various phone conversations about possible policy compromises and outcomes. We made it clear from the outset and repeatedly after that the Greens need at least some movement on the issues we campaigned on; something on the stadium and priority spending on health and housing instead. To protect our precious marine environment and forests.
Labor left it to a mad scramble in the last two weeks. A constrained scramble where the honourable opposition leader was hobbled his and his party’s own decree of never doing a deal with the Greens; of not negotiating on policy; of not being willing or able to meet the moment, to step up and finish what he started when he tabled the no confidence motion in his budget reply all those weeks ago. The votes of the Greens cannot and should not ever be taken for granted.
While Labor wooed the crossbench post-election, he shut out the Greens for as long as he could. He maintained the tired old rhetoric despite the new reality. Despite the maths and the new political paradigm, he met with the crossbench with the expectations that we Greens would just cave – that not being Liberals locked in our vote for Labor, and that he was entitled to it. That’s clearly not how it works.
I should at this point acknowledge the work of the crossbench and the collaborative way many with aligned views on the world have communicated with us over these heavy last weeks. We Greens acknowledge the solidarity and strength that came with your position, and the articulation that Labor can talk to the crossbench all they want, but it won’t get them government without the Greens, so Labor needed to talk to us. Thank you. We recognise and appreciate this approach.
As is self-evident, the policy movement that has come to pass on greyhounds, forests and salmon are but a point in our collective decades‑long campaigns to get movement on these contentious policy areas. They are campaigns we have worked on with you and with the community. For years we have worked with you on these issues either as members of this place or as members of the community. May that collaboration continue. I expect that it will, as it should.
Labor will say we’re passing up the opportunity for a more progressive government. The attack lines have started. They’ve leapt into the past to pull out the playbook and frame us as the villain. I read today that we are ‘the enemy of working people’. Mr Winter, what does that even mean? Enemy – why is that language okay? Tassie doesn’t need Trump‑style politics. You really demean yourself. You can be better than that.
You want to talk about enemies, Mr Winter? I’m starting to think that you are your own worst enemy. When Labor fails, it is always someone else’s fault. Attack is the best form of defence, so they think – or so they are told to think. When they don’t get their way, they denigrate and deride with the tired old rhetoric the electorate has just rejected by electing another minority parliament. How that gets them a better outcome next time is beyond me.
We do have a more progressive parliament. The process since the election has delivered proactive ideas about how to make the parliament’s work better, and how we collaborate, own problems and share solutions. Whether it’s Labor’s framework for collaboration or the Liberals’ foundations of stability, there is now a long list of initiatives and many have merit. We can deliver many of them. With the crossbench we now have, if Labor can bring itself to support reform on the floor of the parliament, we can make it happen – on housing and rental reform, social justice, animal welfare, and electoral law reform. If 18 of us here agree, we can make it law, and make Lutruwita/Tasmania a kinder, more just place to live. If Labor can be collaborative, together we can make it happen from opposition.
It seems now we are collectively at a crossroads. Labor is at a junction and it has options. As always, it has choices. I fear it has taken kneejerk steps down the path of opposition for opposition’s sake, of attack and antagonism and vilification, especially of us. We all know where that will take them.
The alternative is that by working together where we can, collaboration with the crossbench, achievement on progressing law reform and other positive change by weight of our collective numbers, we can build trust, a genuine relationship, a shared approach and positive outcomes for the people who voted to put us in these seats. We Greens are not seat‑warmers. We’re not just here to hold the government to account, although we will. We are here to effect change from whatever position we find ourselves. We’ll work with anyone willing to work with us on the agenda that we can agree on. We won’t agree on everything, but we can agree on much.
How else does Labor think it can be any different in four years’ time after the next election? Few expect majority government, especially a Labor majority, to come roaring back at the next election. Fewer again would expect that if they go down the path of aggression and automatic antithesis for the views and ideas of the crossbench and the Tasmanian people we represent.
Ditch the old guard’s playbook. Drop the rhetoric that boxes you into a corner and condemns you to opposition because you refuse to give yourself the space to work with others ‑ us especially. Accept that you’re not entitled to government. You need to earn it, with the public and with the crossbench. Build a bridge, communicate cross-chamber, collaborate cross-chamber. Achieve some outcomes, build trust, relationships and respect. Set up a dynamic where next time, after the next election, you don’t need to win our trust and support because you’ve already earned it. Hating on us will never win you government. How can it, if you need us? Hate should never be rewarded. Why should it?
In June we voted no confidence and today we will not. In June, we thought Labor was a viable alternative; today we do not. We don’t have confidence in Jeremy Rockliff, but, as time has shown, Dean Winter has failed to step up and demonstrate why we should have confidence in him.
The SPEAKER – Please use the title ‘honourable.’
Mr BAYLEY – My apologies, honourable Speaker. Without confidence in the alternative, we cannot vote against the Premier, newly and rightly commissioned by the Governor under the principles and conventions of our system. An imperfect system, possibly, but the best system we have, and one widely acknowledged as delivering the most accurate, representative model of democratic governance. It’s one thing to bring down a Premier believing you have an alternative; it’s another thing to do it knowing that you don’t.
We don’t have confidence in a Winter-led Labor government. The actions of the last weeks have led us to that conclusion. Labor’s tired, shallow rhetoric we hear in here today and see in the media only confirms, indeed, reinforces that conclusion. Jeremy Rockliff has recognised reality and stepped up to meet the moment.
Honourable SPEAKER – Sorry Mr Bayley, the honourable Premier.
Mr BAYLEY – Sorry. The honourable Premier Rockliff has recognised reality and stepped up to meet it. The honourable Leader of the Opposition, Mr Winter, has not. With policy compromises and his own pitch for a new way of working, the Premier is making commitments that are positive when delivered, and we will be working hard, together with the crossbench, to make sure he does deliver on those promises.
While we’re rightly advised to be cynical and sceptical based on past form, it gives us something to work with and hold him to. We won’t stop fighting to hold the Liberals to account and to assure they deliver on their promises. They need to deliver on their promises to maintain the stability of this Parliament.
No matter who formed government, the challenges ahead of us are great and getting greater. They need an honest, accountable, collaborative response. Last year’s State of the Environment Report highlighted a deteriorating state of play on a whole raft of environmental measures. Summer salps and jellyfish, the mass mortality of caged salmon, and decaying fish washing up on southeast beaches pushed the emergency beyond just alarm. This week, in winter, there’s a bacterial outbreak in feedlot salmon, for which the industry is now seeking approval to use hundreds of kilograms of a new antibiotic dumped in our public waterways.
In South Australia, an algal bloom has devastated the coastal environment and coastal communities in a sign of things to come. Why do we think we’ll be insulated from that here? Bird flu is sweeping the planet and it’s coming to Tasmania. All three of our migratory parrots are now on life support for a trajectory to extinction, in no small part due to habitat loss. For the swift parrot, Tasmania still logs nesting and foraging habitat to feed the struggling, subsidised sawmills and an international woodchip market. Without an end to native forest logging, we drive species and climate change to a far worse place. We simply have to stop felling and burning our beautiful, carbon-rich and wildlife-safeguarding native forests.
We need budget repair. Central to budget repair is a stadium that few want, Tasmania doesn’t need, and collectively we can’t afford. Neither party seems to accept this and won’t even consider a position where they reject the stadium, even if the Planning Commission recommends so. There’s no upper limit on cost, despite massive cost blowouts and skyrocketing debt. Meanwhile, the housing waitlist grows longer, education outcomes trail the nation and the health system cannot cope with an ageing, unhealthy population that is sicker and waits longer for care than any other jurisdiction.
We have participated in the inaugural meeting of Treasurer Abetz’s budget panel, noting the intention to work more collaboratively, be more accountable and share understanding of the situation at hand and the government responses to it. We’re in no mind to boycott, but are yet to be convinced it rises to the challenge and that Treasurer Abetz can meet it. Discussions continue about a joint standing committee on budget repair, and a proposal may be brought to this House if we can agree here on the floor that that is a better option. It is clear that neither Liberal nor Labor command the full confidence of this House and Premier Rockliff will govern on the commission of the Governor. Issues of all types will be determined on the floor of this House. From the fate of government to the passage of bills and the establishment of committees, this House will determine the outcome of the matters we debate based on the numbers, not purely party lines.
I congratulate new members and look forward to working with you, not only the crossbenchers. I look forward to getting to know the new Liberal and Labor members and finding, I hope, ways we can work together where we agree and respect where we do not.
Commiserations to those colleagues who lost their seats in the last election. This is a brutal place to work; an election is a tough performance review. I hope you are all doing okay in the face of your new professional reality and can find contentment with not being here, because it will be difficult in here. It already is.
It seems Labor have lurched into a trajectory of negative attack and hostile engagement. It’s viewing its own failure to be able to do what’s needed to grasp the chance of governing as a renewed opportunity to blame others, resent rejection and double down on a strategy that have failed them this time and will fail them the next.
Meanwhile, the Liberals have much to make up for. They are on notice, just like the salmon industry, to do better and work with this parliament in a more accountable and transparent way. This is a more progressive parliament, reflecting the will of the people to move beyond base politics, to work together for their collective good and create a Tasmania that lives up to the brand we sell to the world: clean, conserved, clever and compassionate.
The opportunities are immense if we work together for the good of all Tasmanians. We must. The risks are too great and would condemn our children to a financial and environmental debt that will be impossible to repay. We cannot support this motion. We have no confidence in either, but commit to working with both, as best they will allow us, to deliver a stable parliament that works in the interests of the people that put us here.
